Obama went to Ohio. He called Vivek Ramaswamy "thirsty."
That is a former president, in a Cleveland rally, using the word thirsty about a man running for governor. Somewhere a political consultant is updating a slide deck.
Here is the asset in question. Ramaswamy ran an ad featuring Donna Arthur, the estranged mother of Democrat Amy Acton. Arthur calls her daughter a liar. Acton has said she hasn't spoken to her mother in nearly 50 years.
Ramaswamy doubled down. Gov. Mike DeWine, a fellow Republican, asked for the ad to come down. Ramaswamy defended it as fair game.
Think of it as a thesis. Source your key witness from someone Acton hasn't spoken to since the Carter administration. Check the chart. Nothing says "closing argument" like a testimonial with a half-century gap in the data.
Obama's review was brief. "No line he won't cross," he said. Then he added that he doesn't know how standards got so low that someone could run an ad like that.
Trump weighed in from West Palm Beach. He said, "I don't think you can get a better reference on that." A reference. Like a landlord form. Like Acton is applying for a studio apartment and her mother left a note on the fridge.
Acton's response was calmer. She said her opponent chose to exploit her childhood to save his struggling campaign. Her stepfather was indicted on a rape charge involving her when she was a child. That is the material the ad team picked. Somebody got a bonus for that.
The ad's creative director deserves a quarterly review. Objective: win Ohio. Method: ask a woman's estranged mother to call her a liar on camera. Result: a bipartisan chorus of condemnation, the sitting Republican governor on the other side, and Barack Obama doing a bit about thirsty guys.
Retail traders love a doubling down. It's their whole personality. Ramaswamy just did it with a campaign instead of a margin account, and the margin call is coming November 3.
Ramaswamy bet the governorship on a mother who hasn't seen her daughter since 1978, and somehow that's the part of his portfolio with the best reference.
Photo by DJ Johnson on Unsplash
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